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I always wanted to write a cookbook — ever since I started cooking when I was 7 years old. My mom always joked, that the skill to cook skips one generation and since my grandmother was a very good cook (see Oma’s Lentil Soup recipe from last week), it was mostly up to me as a young teenager to cook family meals.

This wish became stronger over the past few years, as I have been cooking for my children. It is important to me to serve my family nutritious, healthy, and diverse meals to my family. My 2 girls have started to enjoy critiquing the food my husband and I put on the table. As a family, we mainly cook vegetable-based Italian food — with some German meat dishes mixed in for Shabbat and Yom Tovim.

I tell you all this because I recently had the opportunity to review Renee Muller’s new book “Our Table — Time-Tested Recipes, Memorable Meals” and after reading it, I have no desire to write one of my own. I simply couldn’t do better than Renee has already done.

And here is why:

The first thing that you notice about this cookbook is that it is beautiful. No, actually, it is stunning. From cover to cover, the food in the photos is styled so elegant, but yet simplistic and approachable – just like the recipes that emphasize the characteristics of North Italian cuisine with is fresh, flavorful and homely approach.

I recently gave away most of my kosher cookbooks and kept only three special ones because they were wedding gifts. I did this because I could not stand how the recipes mostly relied on processed food. I try to feed my family on whole foods (preferably grown locally or even at home), so that was not an option. I was so excited to see that I have only discovered one recipe that calls for duck sauce!

Over the past few weeks, I picked it up and read the stories that are included in many recipes. If you are new to some techniques used in this cookbook (e.g., how to shape, cut and cook gnocchi), you can follow along with 11 video tutorials that come with the book.

Since we are a bit crazy about goat cheese, this Rosh Hashanah, I am looking forward to integrating the following recipes into our Yom Tov menu:

Creamy Mozzarella Balls

Butternut Squash Cream Soup

Caramelized Onion Goat Cheese Tart

Roasted Beet & Goat Cheese Salad

Sea Salt Caramels

Apple & Honey Rosh Hashanah Muffins

The last recipe I am especially excited about since I was allowed to share it with you today:

Dairy/Pareve || Freezer Friendly || about 48 muffins At our house, Rosh Hashanah cannot happen without honey muffins. At least, that’s the way my kids see it. It’s a family project, and by now, a family tradition, too. This recipe was given to me by a relative in Israel who bakes them all the time and claims that no matter how many batches she bakes, there are never enough. She’s absolutely right. We once baked a quadruple batch of these (sans the apples) for a bake sale on our block and we were left without a crumb!

Author: Renee Muller | Artscroll/October 2016

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: Jewish

Serves: 48 Muffins

Ingredients

For the apples

2 Tablespoons butter OR margarine

4 Granny Smith apples, diced

4 Tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the muffins

2 cups prepared tea, lukewarm

2 cups sugar

2 cups oil

2 cups honey

12 eggs

6 cups flour

2 Tablespoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 heaping Tablespoons cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Prepare the apples: In a saucepan, melt butter over a medium-low flame. Add apples, sugar, and cinnamon; cook until apples are fragrant and soften a bit, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Fill each muffin cup halfway with batter. (I like to use a cupcake pen for this; I find it very helpful.) Top with a teaspoon of prepared apples. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out almost dry with some moist crumbs attached.

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If you are looking for beautiful, simplistic and fresh food made at home with love rather than in a factory, you should buy this book.

This lentil soup was one of my favorite meals growing up! My grandmother (Oma is the German word for grandma) used to make such a yummy lentil soup that this recipe has become somewhat of a family treasure. And today I want to share with you.

Today one of the other parents in my children’s school asked on our Facebook group what they send for lunch. She was somewhat stumped because she was sick of making a bagel with cream cheese every single day. My children’s school has some nut and seed allergies, it’s a sugar-free school and all days except one is dairy or parve (so no meat) — which does make packing school lunches somewhat of a challenge.

So, when we sat down for family dinner and devoured this soup and my 7-year old said: “Mommy, this is really the perfect soup, you know?!” I decided I will write it up so other families might enjoy it too.

This soup is so quick to prepare and needs almost no oversight while cooking — you can literally prepare it in less than ten minutes.

Today was a rainy day and I felt like making soup. So I made it today for lunch between writing and scheduling close to a hundred social media posts and writing another 1,500-word blog post for my daytime job as a digital marketer. And taking the time to get dinner prep out of the way by the time the girls came home from school gives me back some precious time with them.

A quick word to the lentils. I am trying to eat as clean as I can, so I love to buy organic whenever possible. When it comes to lentils, I really like the Bob’s Red Mill Heritage Beans Brown Lentils for their nutty and earthy flavor.

I love this recipe because:

Great for meal prep: You can cook huge batches and freeze them in smaller portions.

Kid-Friendly. Kids love it – it makes great school lunches and gets kids to eat their veggies easy…

Easy-to-travel with. You can prep this soup ahead of time and portion it out in wide-mouth pint mason jars, that can be stored in the fridge for up to three days or you can even can them using a pressure cooker. Then grab and go for an easy brown-bagged lunch for work or on a business trip. Just heat up in a microwave.

Super healthy. Lentils are an amazing source of dietary fiber and important minerals such as iron, copper, phosphorus, zinc, and manganese. These yummy legumes also include protein, molybdenum, folate, pantothenic acid, potassium, and vitamin B1 and B6.

Budget-Friendly. Okay, it’s cheap. Even if you buy all vegetables organic, you will still come out to about $10/pot which serves 8-10 people.

It’s vegetarian, vegan, and kosher parve. There are no animal products used, so go ahead and enjoy.

Oh, and did I mention, it gets even better the next day when you warm it up?

Put the olive oil and finely chopped onion into a large, heavy-bottom soup pot and let the onion become translucent on medium heat. Don't let it burn.

In the meantime, peel potatoes and carrots. Cut into ½" pieces and add to the onion into the pot.

Then thoroughly rinse the lentils and add. Add salt, pepper, and one bay leaf.

Fill with filtered water until all ingredients are well covered.

Once it boils, set the timer for 15 minutes. Test if the lentils are cooked.

Add vinegar and sugar before serving and mix well.

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Germans like to eat their lentil soup without tomato paste in it, but they add sugar and vinegar just before serving. Pair it with some fresh baked Bauernbrot with some butter spread on top and some (home-brewed) ale beer for the adults and you will be in heaven.

If you are feeling in the mood to switch things up, you could add celery (we just don’t like cooked celery in our family) or if you eat meat, you can add a thicker hot dog-like sausage called Bockwurst.

I would love to hear what you think – please let me know how your’s came out!

Raise you hand if you are so happy that summer is here! Raise both hands if you are happy that summer camp is here!! Hooray for summer camp! My kids absolutely love it – in fact, they start asking way before Passover when it is finally time to go

So, yesterday was the day! The first day of camp. They swam, they danced Zumba, they colored, and they baked cookies. They ran through sprinklers, learned new songs and met new friends. And at the end of the day, they were exhausted.

Today, it was really hot and muggy out, and I wanted to make them a cold, refreshing snack they could enjoy on their way home.

I had about 5 minutes until my husband had to run out to get them, so I whipped out my blender and made them a strawberry banana smoothie with Greek yogurt and a little local honey.

And the best part about this recipe is it uses frozen bananas. If you are scratching your head wondering if I really just said “frozen bananas,” yes, you can freeze them. When they are ripe, just peel them and pop them in a Ziplock Freezer bag. You can keep them frozen for months. I love adding them to smoothies since they give it an instant creamy texture and icecream-like taste.

I still remember the first time I had gazpacho. My father and I were traveling through Andalusia (South of Spain).

Mountains of the Sierra Nevada — Image Credit: Creative Commons

We just checked into this tiny bed and breakfast after climbing the mountains of the gorgeous Sierra Nevada. We had passed through some smaller villages that smelled of jamón serrano ham. When we finally arrived in the middle of nowhere, our hosts prepared for us the most delicious green gazpacho soup and rustic bread. I was not kosher back then, so we ate up!

Every time I make it, I have to think of my dad… he passed away more than five years ago and this trip is one of my favorite memories!

Now we are having this soup all summer long — a lot of times with vegetables from our own garden. We love it because it is very refreshing, quickly made soup that can be easily prepared ahead of time and makes a fantastic “bagged” lunch for work.

The secret is simplicity and fresh ingredients. I add lots of cucumbers, zucchini, and even corn to tame the acidity of the tomatoes a little.

If you are planning the take them with you for work or while traveling, fill them into wide-mouth 8oz jars and store them in the fridge for up the 3 days. The soup will separate into solid components and water – so just shake it before eating it.

There are a few things I sorely miss from Germany that I simply cannot find here in the United States. Two of them are Griesbrei (which is a milk pudding made from something similar to grits or polenta) and real chocolate pudding (not the processed stuff you can buy in the store).

That is because Griesbrei and chocolate pudding are a huge part of my childhood. Whenever we were sick, in need of comfort or when my mom did not know what else to make for breakfast, lunch or dinner, she would make us one of those.

My whipped cream is not so fancy. I just poured some fresh heavy cream in a mason jar (not more than a 1/4 of the mason jar) for 90 seconds, and you have yummy, healthy whipped cream. No extra sugar or extra additives.

Great Taste, But The Texture Was Too Thick

Let’s start with the most important part first: taste! I loved the taste when it was still warm – it was so chocolatey! It reminded me of my childhood… I was in heaven. It is great cold as well, but as it cools and sets, it thickens a bit more – as a cream pie should.

Also, I do not bake in my Ball mason jars, as the manufacturer does not recommend it for safety reasons. So, I opted for crushing the Oreo cookies including filling in my food processor and using that as my “crust”.

I was a bit surprised at how much it was. The recipe is a great amount for a bake sale or birthday party, but it was too much for everyday use. Next time, I will half the amount.

The only thing that threw me off with this recipe is how the instructions are written. Since I use the same plugin, I know it is a WordPress limitation to some degree… but for someone that does not like instructions to start with, mixing them with general notes was confusing.

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About Me

I have been cooking since I was a little girl.

Growing up in East Germany, preserving food grown in your own garden and cooking from scratch was more than a way of life - it was a necessity. Our basement was full of jarred apple sauce, pickled vegetables, jams and fruit preserves.

I started The Kosher Mason Jar to share with you my passion for healthy food, clean eating, mason jars, and of course, our Jewish traditions.